


Positive

by bellagerantalii



Category: Avengers (Comics), Black Widow (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Kid Fic, Red Room, Soviet Spies Who Are In Love, Soviet Superbaby, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 11:48:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1225156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellagerantalii/pseuds/bellagerantalii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha finds out she's pregnant while being treated for a concussion. James is elated, Natasha is shocked, and Clint and Steve compete for the "Best Uncle" award. Oh, and the criminal underworld can't wait to get its hands on a Soviet Superbaby.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Positive

**Author's Note:**

> I love Bucky and Natasha so much. My heart is still broken after her memory loss. Bucky should have gone all "The Vow" or whatever the hell that movie is called and tried to win Natasha back. Because Soviet Soulmates. Basically, this is what happens when they get back together and have a baby.

It happens in the medical bay of Avengers Tower after they kick Thanos off of Earth for the umpteenth time.

Steve is there when they find out. So is Banner. Natasha has a broken leg, possibly a concussion, and after a routine blood test, a baby.

“How is this possible?” she says simply, staring at the results. Bucky is staring at printout just as intently, his mouth hanging open, and his expression somewhere between shock and absolute joy. Steve is beaming, and Banner is also smiling.

Natasha wonders why the hell everyone is so happy, but after three repeat tests and assurances that some cosmic-time traveler didn’t rape her (it happened to a friend of theirs), she’s allowed herself to think that maybe this whole thing isn’t horrible.

It still doesn’t change the fact that it’s a disaster waiting to happen, and this is what she tells James when they get back to their apartment in Little Ukraine. 

“Why is this a disaster?” he asks, sitting down next to her on the couch and wrapping his arm around her. He’s trying to hide his smile now because, really he already knows why. Natasha is right most of the time and James is usually more than happy to admit it. 

“It’s not that I’m unhappy. But we’re not _good people_ , James.”

James raises his eyebrows at this. “Since when was being good a prerequisite for having a kid? I don’t think we’d be terrible at it.”

“We have enemies. If they find out about this, the child won’t even have a chance. They will abduct it and use it as leverage, or worse. Revenge.”

“Most of the people who have personal vendettas against us are dead. I’m pretty sure they are, at least.”

“No one stays dead in this business.”

“Nat, let me ask you one thing.”

“What?”

“Do you want it?”

Natasha looks at James and bites her lip. He’s trying to hide it, but his eyes are pleading even as the rest of his face is a blank neutral. He wants to keep it, and Natasha thinks he needs it. For all he tries to become a part of the new world he’s been thrown into, for all he works at it, there really are very few things that tie him here. 

Natasha thinks of her poor, stillborn baby buried somewhere in Eastern Europe. She thinks of cold nights and black ribbons and pain. The pain of knowing that even if Rose had made it into the world alive, she still never would have had a chance. Her father was dead and everyone around her was starving. All she would have had was a mother whose memories of her could be erased with the push of a button. It wouldn’t have counted for much.

But this is 2014, not 1944. It’s going to take a lot more than a Nazi bullet to kill this child’s father, and Natasha has no intention of letting anyone into her head again.

She focuses back on James.

“Yes. I do.”

 

As soon as they decide to keep the baby, there are a slew of decisions to be made and strings to be pulled. Natasha and James move out of their apartment in Little Ukraine almost immediately. They make their excuses to the neighbors, carefully omitting Natasha’s pregnancy. It’s not like anyone in the building knows what she and James actually do, but just in case someone more sinister comes snooping around, the last thing they need is for knowledge of a Soviet Superbaby to get out.

Clint comes up with the “Soviet Superbaby” moniker one afternoon. He’s lounging around Avengers Tower, injured and bored out of his mind while almost everyone else is off punching bad guys. Well, everyone except Natasha, who is under strict instructions from Doctors Banner, McCoy, and Pym to stay out of the field while pregnant. She’s also been submitted to daily ultrasounds to make sure her killer womb isn’t murdering her child.

“We are not calling it that,” she says curtly, glaring in Clint’s direction from over the pages of a fashion magazine.

“It’s better than ‘it’,” Clint calls from the kitchen. 

“We don’t know the sex yet. It’s still an ‘it’.”

“No. ‘It’ is Soviet Superbaby until you find out.”

Natasha sighs as Clint limps into the room carrying a tray filled with an excessive amount of food. He flops down on the couch next to Natasha and groans when he pulls his stitches. 

“Eating your feelings is not going to help your recovery.”

“Oh, this isn’t for me. Well, this is,” says Clint, taking a sandwich and a coke can off the crowded tray. “The rest of this is for you.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Natasha sighs, looking at the spread that includes pickles, chocolate, leftover Chinese, yogurt, and a peanut butter sandwich. 

“Did you google pregnancy cravings and put the top hits on the try?” she asks, eyeing the peanut butter.

“Yes. Aren’t I sweet?”

Natasha makes a noncommittal grunt and takes the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The peanut butter is _divine_. She doesn’t remember anything tasting this good, ever. Which is odd, because she never had strong feelings about peanut butter before. Now she wants it on a spoon.

There must be a giant king-sized jar of this in her pantry at all times. 

 

James, of course, finds it hilarious that Natasha craves peanut butter, of all things. One afternoon during Natasha’s second trimester he drives the car (it’s a used Volvo station wagon. Both James and Natasha refuse to buy a mini-van) out to the suburbs while Natasha is getting a pedicure. He goes to a _Costco_ of all places and buys the largest tubs of peanut butter either of them have ever seen. Natasha laughs when she sees how he’s lined them up perfectly in the pantry of the new house in Brooklyn, and he looks so pleased with himself that she just has to kiss him. She reaches up and cups his face, both of them maneuvering deftly to accommodate her rather conspicuous baby bump.

Of course, they found out the baby’s sex months ago. Natasha thanks her lucky stars, not that she has many, that Soviet Superbaby (the name has unfortunately stuck) is a girl. For all she trusts and even loves Steve, there is no way in hell that she is allowing any child of her to be named “Steven.” She’s never really cared for it, is all. At least, not as a first name

Instead, Rebecca Stevie Barnes comes into the world on a beautiful day in May. Her cheeks are plump and red and she already has a devious look in her eyes. She is beautiful and healthy and alive. Her DNA is a “scientific anomaly” which gets Hank McCoy very, very excited. He wants to take about a dozen samples, but Natasha, sitting upright on the hospital bed and holding Becs in her arms, assures his that if he tries to touch her baby for any sort of experimentation, she will personally kill him and make it look like one of those BAMFS that run around his school did it.

James is absolutely elated and insists on holding Rebecca when Natasha isn’t. He’s in love with the baby and with Natasha and his face shows it. He couldn’t hide how thrilled he is even if he tried. 

Steve has somehow gotten ahold of a fancy new digital camera and is snapping pictures every chance he gets. He only puts the thing down after Natasha offers to let him hold his namesake for the first time. 

Tony calls some friends he has in the government to get Becca’s birth certificate filed safely away so that only a few people can ever find it, and he also tricks out the Brooklyn row house with a fancy yet subtle new security system and makes the Wi-Fi and computers in the house as unhackable as he could design them. 

 

Since James isn’t officially alive, he eagerly volunteers to stay home with Becs once Natasha is able to get back into the field. In an unprecedented show of extreme string pulling, Steve manages to get the U.S. government to shell out a hefty pension for James.

“Whose boots did you have to lick to do this?” asks Bucky, looking down in astonishment at the check he’s just removed from the official-looking government envelope. 

“Couple of Senators owed me a favor from way back. And of course Captain America showing up unexpectedly at a ribbon-cutting ceremony isn’t bad, either.”

The thought of Steve whoring himself out to politicians for any reason makes Natasha both amused, suspicious, and, well, humbled. Not that there isn’t anything Steve wouldn’t do for James, but… Natasha is touched that he did.

To let Steve know he’s grateful, James only bitches at him for about five minutes about how he didn’t have to do this, how he has some principles left, and that they can do fine on their own. Steve sees right through it, of course, but just smiles and says that if that’s how Bucky really feels, then he should just put it in a college fund for Becs or something. Natasha laughs at both of them and gives Steve a quick kiss on his cheek and a smile as a way of saying thank you.

 

To supplement the pension, Natasha takes some jobs on the side, in addition to Avenging. It’s what she’s always done, except now only half of her earnings go into her trust funds. Most of her most ghastly sins were committed long enough ago that her victims—or their families—have either died or have no idea Natasha has wronged them. She has her lawyer send one-off, anonymous payments to some of them, and only has about two actual trusts to tend to.

“So have you stopped pumping money to these people because you’ve finally forgiven yourself, or is there something else I should know about?” James asks one day. They’re unloading groceries in their kitchen, and Becs is still strapped to James’ front in the baby carrier; the thing is more often than not strapped to him these days. 

“Will _you_ ever forgive yourself?” Natasha asks, her voice a pitch lower than normal. 

“So the answer is ‘no.’”

Natasha makes a humming sound as she goes to lift Becs off of James. He’s trying to reorganize the refrigerator while avoiding slamming the baby’s head into a container of leftovers. It isn’t working. Becs looks up at Natasha with her almond-shaped eyes and coos as she snuggles herself onto her mother’s shoulder. James smiles and moves in to kiss Natasha, letting his lips linger a little on her before pulling away. 

“Does this mean you have a new atonement project? Are you handing out tokens again?” he asks softly.

“I have a new project,” Natasha replies, smiling just a little as Becs shifts in her arms. “But it doesn’t involve ‘tokens.’”

 

For the first eight months of her life, Rebecca is a dream baby. She doesn’t fuss often, has a regular sleep schedule, is healthy, and is the most serious baby James and Natasha have ever seen. Most of the time she looks like she contemplating some obscure math problem.

She grows dark, wispy brown hair and will giggle when James pulls faces for her. Her favorite foods are cottage cheese and applesauce, and her toothless smile may just be the most adorable thing Natasha has ever seen. She wishes she could see it more often. Becca smiles most for James and Natasha, but more and more frequently she’s bestowing them on Clint and Steve, especially when Steve wears his most spangled uniform or when they’re feeding her.

And then one night she absolutely refuses to sleep. Natasha sits up with her all night, singing Russian lullabies she can barely remember. Whenever she tries to put her baby back in her crib, though, Becs wails and sobs like the world is ending. 

Mother and baby both get short naps the next day, but the second night is almost as bad as the first. James finally lulls Becs into a deep enough sleep that she doesn’t notice that she’s being set down in her crib, but just as he’s about to fall asleep himself, the wailing starts again. He groans, but slides out of bed, and a few minutes later the wailing subsides.

After the second night, and a day of unusually fussy Becs, Natasha and James decide that she’s probably teething, and give her a small dose of children’s Tylenol before they try and get her to bed. After some initial whining, Becs relaxes, and sleeps through most of the night. She wakes up at three and refuses to go back to sleep.

 

“You look exhausted,” says Steve as Natasha slides into the seat next to him on the quinjet. “If you’re too tired, you don’t have to come.”

“I’m fine,” Natasha says, a little harsher than she intended. She sees Steve raise his eyebrows, and she sighs. “Becs’s teething and hasn’t actually slept a full night in a few days.”

“I… Have no idea how to fix that,” Steve admits, chuckling. He gives Natasha a sympathetic look, though, before the plane takes off and he moves to brief the team.

 

Two days later, Natasha walks through her front door, a little worse for the wear, and sees James lying on his back on the couch, just barely asleep, with Becs shifting on top of him. Natasha closes the door silently, and moves to walk up the stairs. She needs a hot shower and some painkillers before she relieves James. 

Unfortunately, Becs chooses that moment to wake up. 

James swears in Russian, and Natasha sighs and goes into the living room. The shower will have to wait.

“No change?” she asks, and both James and Becs look up hopefully. Becs reaches out to her mother and stops crying, and James mechanically hands her over once he’s stolen a kiss from Natasha. 

“How did the mission go?” he asks, and he sounds like he hasn’t slept in days. The dark circles under his eyes are larger than usual, and his shirt is covered with wrinkles and has at least a day’s worth of baby drool all over it.

“Not bad. Nothing world ending, anyway. I take it you haven’t slept in two days?”

“You’re the one covered in bruises,” James replies, brushing back her hair to get a better view of the bruise on her neck, which is shaped suspiciously like a hand. 

“Who did that?” he asks, trying to keep his tone calm.

“No one we should worry about. Go take a shower and sleep. I’m fine here.”

“Like hell you are,” says James, pressing a soft kiss on the bruise. A soft shiver runs down Natasha’s spine and she wishes now more than ever that Becs would just fall asleep. 

“I’m fine. I’ve been through worse.”

“I know you have. So have I. I, however, have spent most of the past two days lying on the couch listening to nocturnes or watching Yo-Gaba-Whatever the Hell it is. You, on the other hand, were put into at least one chokehold and thrown across a room, if that bruise and the way you’re walking is anything to go by.”

Before Natasha can retort, James has disappeared into the kitchen, only to return a few seconds later with some extra-strength painkillers and a glass of water.

“I’ll trade you,” he says. Natasha smiles, hands him Becs, who is about to start crying again, and takes the offering. Then James shoos her upstairs before Becs can wail again. After a shower that is admittedly much shorter than she’d like, Natasha pries Becs from James and makes him shower and nap. She puts in a Baby Einstein video and lies down on the couch, spreading Becs out on top of her and wiggling the baby’s nose until she gets a short laugh. 

James comes downstairs an hour later (an actual nap was never an option) to find both mother and child fast asleep on the couch and a blue screen on the tv. 

 

“We should go out sometime,” whispers James one morning. It’s barely seven o’clock, but both of them are already awake and listening for a rattle from the baby monitor. Becs usually slaps the bars of her crib and gurgles a little when she first wakes up, which will be any minute now. 

Natasha considers this. She and James haven’t been on an actual date since before Becca was born and that had been… Can it really have been over a year ago?

“That’s probably a good idea,” she says. “Think we can pry Squirrel Girl away from Jessica and Luke Cage?”

“Steve and Sharon could probably take her for the night,” Bucky points out. He still doesn’t exactly trust anyone but himself or Natasha with his baby girl, but he’s willing to make an exception for Steve. 

“He’s on a break, or whatever amounts to a break for him. We are _not_ going to interrupt his down time.”

“He won’t mind. Come on, he’s practically begged us to let him take her for a while. And there’s no way in hell anyone is going to kidnap her or anything… Steve is _Steve_ and Sharon is tops in all everything involving ass-kicking.”

“Better than me?” 

“Well of course she isn’t better than you. I doubt she’d agree to go to pancake houses with me, for example.”

“If that’s you’re idea of a date, then-“

“I was thinking more along the lines of a show, dinner, and a hotel, but…”

“You spoil me, James Buchanan Barnes,” says Natasha, snuggling up to him and pressing her lips to his. 

“If you want to get pancakes, though, there’s this place I saw two blocks down that’s new,” James says, pulling his face away but rolling over and pulling Natasha on top of him. 

“No,” Natasha says firmly, rolling her eyes but kissing him again.

“But they have crepes and French toast and other non-pancake foods.”

“Shut up, darling.”

James does, at least until they hear the tell tale rattling of crib bars. 

 

Steve is more than willing to babysit, so a week later Natasha and James find themselves in his Brooklyn loft, dressed to the nines for the first time in forever, and trying very, very hard not to show how nervous they are about leaving Becs.

Natasha keeps telling herself that it’s only fourteen hours, that Steve is desperate not only to protect her and James’ baby but also to make sure Becs doesn’t become as messed up as her father, mother, or adoptive uncle. She reminds herself that Sharon, for all she is almost as much of a workaholic as Steve, can actually care for a fourteen-month old who is already forming simple words. 

She thinks of the jars of baby food that Steve apparently just _keeps in his kitchen cabinets_ , of the fact that the loft had been child-proofed for months before she and James even considered going out, and the fact that most of Becs’ favorite toys are gifts from Steve. 

None of this makes her, or James, less nervous. 

After kissing Becs goodbye and seeing her installed in a high chair with a bowl of cottage cheese and peaches in front of her, James and Natasha finally, reluctantly, take their leave. They drive over to Manhattan, where James pulls up to a fancy hotel on the Upper East Side and tosses the keys to the valet. They walk arm in arm down Park Avenue to the restaurant where James has made reservations under the name “Smith.” They both get salmon, which they eat with a delightful bottle of chardonnay that the pompous wine waiter opens in front of them. While they’re waiting for their dessert to arrive James checks his phone to make sure Steve hasn’t tried to call, and finds a text from him instead. It’s a _selfie_ , of all things, with Steve smiling next to Becs in her high chair. Becs is covered in her dinner and is holding a nilla wafer in her hands. She looks rather pleased. 

“We should give them a call before we go the play,” Natasha says, vocalizing what she and James are both thinking.

“Just to check up. I’m sure everything’s fine, but-“

“Just before we go in.”

They end up calling Steve as soon as they walk out of the restaurant. He’s reading a bedtime story to Becs, apparently, so Sharon picks up and assures Natasha that yes, Becs is all right, yes, she’s behaving, and yes, she’s falling asleep. No, she wasn’t fussy, and no, she didn’t need any children’s Tylenol tonight. 

Somewhat comforted, Natasha and James take a taxi to the theater, where they arrive just in time to take their seats before the lights dim. They hold hands on the arm rest between them and watch two older British Sirs gallivant around the stage. As soon as intermission begins they anxiously check their phones for any missed calls or texts. Steve has sent them both a picture of Becs sleeping on her stomach in the port-a-crib, and James’ picture has “No need to call again tonight. ;)” tacked on after it. 

Natasha has no idea where Steve learned to text, but she can’t bring herself to care when James shuts his phone off, looks back at the audience filing into the theater, and suggests, with a coy smile on his face, that they can technically check into their hotel at any time. 

They miss the second half of the play.

In the morning they wake up to the sun streaming in through the blinds and a tangle of white hotel sheets. They order room service and eat fancy pancakes with strawberries in bed. Then they make their way back to Brooklyn to pick up Rebecca.

When they arrive she’s sitting up on Steve’s living room floor playing with her blocks, happily waving them at Steve, who is lying on his side next to her. 

“Look who it is!” he cries, pointing at James and Natasha. Becs turns her head, breaks out into a huge, full-set-of-teeth smile, and she tries to push herself up onto her legs. She doesn’t quite get there, so Steve swoops her up and brings her over to her parents. James takes her and makes a show about checking for bruises, boo-boos, or cybernetic implants. 

“Don’t you trust me at all? We had a great time, didn’t we Becky?” Steve jokes, and Becs smiles along with him.

 

When Becs is old enough not to throw things out of her stroller, Natasha starts taking her on her morning and afternoon runs. James usually comes along in the morning, but Natasha has timed her afternoon run to coincide with Becs’ naptime, and usually insists that James stay home to try and get an hour or so of sleep as well.

One day when Becs is about a year and a half old, Natasha puts her in the jogging stroller just as she’s about to fall asleep, and after ten minutes of steady jogging, she’s out like a light, her head lolled against the side of the stroller. 

There are a couple of routes Natasha likes to take, depending on how tired Becs is. Today she opts for a shorter route to the park where James is going to meet them later in the afternoon. The sidewalks are fairly clear, and she tells herself she doesn’t spot anything unusual en route to the park. 

Later, when she looks back, she’ll remember a food truck with worn paint but no smell of the tacos it advertises. Of the guy working the thing: tall, muscled, dark hair, and a look she just doesn’t like. She’ll remember that an old man from Guatemala who always smiles at a sleeping Becs usually occupies the spot. That it’s been his spot for years, and that no one else takes it even when he’s sick. 

Instead, she shrugs this off as some new street vendor who doesn’t know the rules yet, and continue onto the jogging trails of the park. There are still people around on their lunch breaks, sneaking in a quick workout or enjoying their lunch on the park benches under the spring sun.

About halfway through the trail Becs begins to wake up. Natasha pulls off of the trail next to a bench, rooting through the basket at the bottom of the stroller to find the sippy cup of apple juice that will last Becs until James arrives. Across the trail are two middle-aged women dressed in business casual, sitting on a bench gossiping about their colleagues.

Natasha hears them standing up across the path, hears them mutter “what a beautiful baby!”, and quickly shoves Becs her juice while pulling the sunshade down over her face. In the same motion, Natasha pulls on her sunglasses, which she should have been wearing the entire run. All of her fine-tuned senses are going crazy and she knows one thing for sure: these women are not the average businesswomen. 

One of the women- five foot four, good physical condition, pencil skirt- is less than a foot away from Natasha and the stroller, and trying to be polite by not looking under the sunshade, unlike her companion.

“I’m so sorry, ma’am, we couldn’t help but notice your baby’s smile. She’s just precious when she’s waking up!”

“Why did you pull the sunshade down?” asks the other. “My little one loved having the sun on her face on days like this.” This one is also wearing a pencil skirt. They’re not here to fight, only to do recon. This does not ease Natasha’s fears.

“She’s got quite a bit of stranger anxiety, sorry,” Natasha says, pitching her voice higher than usual and trying to keep her tone as light and apologetic as possible. 

“The best way for them to get over that is expose them to new people all the time. When my sister had her second child, she-“

“No offense, but my mother-in-law has already given me _plenty_ of advice,” Natasha says, cutting her off. Instead of nodding sympathetically, like the women should, they look thrown off. They’re new to the game.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting in a two hours and I have to shower and get her back to daycare before then. Have a nice day!” she calls as she jogs as casually away from them as possible. 

When she’s out of sight, she runs her hands over ever inch of the stroller, searching for a plant or a bug. She finds nothing, so she kisses Becs on the head (she smiles as says “Mama kiss” in Russian), calls James using her Bluetooth, and starts jogging again. 

He picks up after two rings.

“I’m just leaving the house now. I almost forgot graham crackers.”

“Do not come to the park. Two women wearing blue pencil skirts. 5’4” and 5’5”. Blonde and sandy haired both mid-forties. About a quarter mile on jogging trail five minutes ago. Also faded blue taco truck outside hardware store.”

“Got it,” James replies, sounding absolutely terrified. 

Natasha loops around the neighborhood around the park, changing directions and trying to lose herself in every crowd she comes to. She stops briefly at a convenience store to get Becs some Teddy Grahams and juice to keep her occupied, and finally gets a call on her phone about forty-five minutes after she first calls James. 

“Go back to the park. Meet Fred by the fountain. South gate.”

Natasha jogs back to the park and through the south gate. The two women are sitting on a bench by the entrance, and their eyes follow Natasha as she jogs over to the fountain. She stretches, and bends down to look at her daughter.

“Becs, daddy’s going to come in a few minutes. Are you excited to see daddy?” Natasha asks in English. 

“Daddy!” Becs says. In Russian.

“Can you say hi to daddy in English? I know that will make him happy. Can you do that for mommy, please?” Natasha pleads.

Rebecca looks serious, but before she can say anything else, Natasha can feel someone coming up behind her.

“There’re my girls!” cries James, loud but not too loud, his voice pitched lower than normal. Natasha stands up and kisses him softly on the lips before looking at him properly. He’s wearing a very convincing wig and business suit, his eyebrows are dyed, he has color contacts in, and he’s carrying a worn leather briefcase. He looks like any other New Yorker taking a half-day. 

“Daddy!” cries Becs in English, reaching her arms out to him and James reaches down to tickle her. Natasha breathes a sigh of relief. 

“I’ll take her to get ice cream so you can get ready for your meeting. Knock ‘em dead, babe,” he says, giving Natasha a smile and another kiss. 

“Thanks for taking her, hon,” Natasha replies, turning to her daughter and waving “Bye-bye,” and then pinching James’ ass as she jogs away. 

It takes her an hour to get to a subway stop five blocks from the park. She gets on a train heading towards JFK then changes directions a few stops out. Then she heads back towards Manhattan, getting off at the first stop over the bridge and walking a roundabout route to another station to change lines. She gets off at Times Square and filches a baseball cap off of one of the souvenir stands before deftly avoiding most of the security cameras, then she gets on a line heading south, gets off at Battery Park, and then finally heads uptown to one of her safe houses.

This one is a couple of blocks down from Columbia University, above an art gallery owned by an old Russian tycoon who owes her a favor from a long time ago. It’s the smallest of her New York safe houses, but it’s the most comfortable. The sun is setting over the river, but Natasha pulls the blinds down over the one window and turns on the small television.

The first headline on the news is a report about an Avengers fight somewhere in space, and Natasha sees herself on the T.V. battling alien invaders. The footage has probably been doctored: Natasha definitely wasn’t in space that afternoon. She makes a mental note to thank Tony when all of this is over. If the women in the park are looking for the Black Widow, this footage may just give them doubts.

There’s not much more she can do other than wait and watch the monitors that show the feedback from the cameras on street. It’s not new to Natasha, but it’s never gotten to her before. She knows she needs to sit tight, at least until tonight, but she wants to call James and hear his voice, and hear Becs’ voice, and know they’re okay. She knows that the best thing she can do to protect them is find out whoever is following her, and find out what they want. 

She doesn’t think about the fact that this means she may not see her daughter and her… partner for foreseeable future.

Natasha manages to get an hour or so of sleep before she changes into a pantsuit she has stashed. She slips out of the building as people start to clog the sidewalks on their way to work. She takes another crazy route to Avengers Tower and slips up past security to the top floors.

She nearly cries with joy when she opens the elevator doors. James is sitting at the kitchen bar with Becs on his lap. Both look perfectly unscathed and are just starting in on breakfast. Or, at least Becs is. James looks pale even from behind. Pepper Potts is standing behind the bar with Jarvis, who has an apron on and is pulling blueberry muffins out of the oven. Pepper is trying to comfort James.

“Oh thank god,” breathes Natasha. Pepper, James, and Becs all look up.

“Mama!” cries Becs, trying to squirm off of James’ lap when she sees her mother. James sets her down and Becs toddles over to Natasha, who scoops her baby up in her arms and holds her close.

“Please tell me this was all just me being hyper-vigilant,” says Natasha as James strides towards her and Becs and gathers them in his arms. He looks relieved and scared all at once. She rests her head on his shoulder and feels him tense up before he answers.

“No. I called Steve and Logan as soon as I got off the phone with you. Those women were definitely there for you, or for Becca. We don’t know yet.”

“I’m guessing Logan did a little investigating?”

“Yeah. He tailed them after we left the park.”

James talks about how the women went and met the taco truck Natasha had spotted in a back alley about six blocks south of the park. As far as James knows, Logan is still trailing them. Steve, meanwhile, is following up on some underworld chatter he’d picked up. They’d hear from him and Sharon soon. Clint, when he’d been called, followed James and Becs home and was currently perched on the roof of the building across the street from the house in Brooklyn. No one suspicious has come by yet.

“We have to decide whether it’s better to go back or vanish for a few days,” James ends, putting his hand on Natasha’s face a rubbing his thumb over her cheek. 

“We go back,” Natasha says. The only way they’re going to throw these people off the scent is to act totally unsuspecting- totally unlike the Black Widow and the Winter Soldier. What she says next makes her stomach sink in fear.

“And tomorrow Becs and I go back to the park.”

“Excuse me?”

“We go back to the park tomorrow. The women will probably be there again, but they’d expect the Black Widow to be suspicious, and won’t expect me to show up. Someone normal, on the other hand, will keep going back, despite some annoying people.”

“Becs shouldn’t go.”

“I’ll take Becca, and then we can drop her off at that daycare front of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s. I drop her off, and if the women are after me, a tail will be set on me. If they’re after Becca, they’ll cover the daycare.”

James looks like he’s considering it.

“Our best shot at taking care of this is to end it quickly and quietly. That means we find out who they’re working for and what they want. Then we feed them information that puts them off our trail.”

James finally agrees to this. He dislikes putting Natasha and Becs in danger, but it really is the best solution. 

The next afternoon, Natasha hides her gauntlets in the snack bag, pulls the sunshade on the stroller down so that it hides Becs’ entire torso, and heads off to the park. She’s wearing sunglasses and some carefully applied makeup to make her look just different enough from her usual self. No beauty mark near her nose, lips just a little thinner, and a smattering of freckles across her nose. Even though she knows she’s right about the women, she still prays that she’s wrong.

Only one of the women is in the park today. Natasha is going to owe Tony a big favor after this- she’s sure the footage from last night has made the women, or their superiors, question how good their information is. 

Natasha jogs around on the paths for over an hour before daring to get within earshot of the one woman. When she does, she stops to tie her shoe and hands Becs apple juice and chocolate teddy grahams. 

The woman-the shorter one, the one who spoke first yesterday- speaks again. 

“Excuse me, ma’am?” she asks, tentatively.

“Hmm?” says Natasha, looking up from her shoe. “Oh! It’s you again.”

“Oh, yes,” says the woman. “I… I just wanted to apologize for yesterday. We realized that we probably seemed a little overbearing and-“

“Please, don’t apologize,” interrupts Natasha, waving her hand. “I was having a rough day.”

The woman backs away soon after that, seemingly accepting Becs’ supposed stranger anxiety. 

Natasha jogs out of the park, and notices that the woman is following behind her at a respectful distance. She’s on her tail until she gets to the daycare, and walks right by, as if on her way back to the office. Natasha hands Becs over to the waiting SHIELD agent, giving her daughter a long, tight hug. James will be by in his disguise from yesterday to pick her up in a few hours.

Leaving the stroller at the daycare center, Natasha immediately locates her new tail: a twenty-something man dressed in khakis and a button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. She takes a direct route to the nearest subway station, and begins to panic when she realizes that he’s not following her.

“My tail isn’t following me. He’s after Becs,” she says, her hidden earpiece transmitting back to James and the other Avengers back at the Tower. She voice is shaking with fear and rage and she wants to scream _How did they know??_

She wants to loop back to the daycare reduce the man waiting outside to a lump of broken bones. She wants to find who he’s working for and _break_ them until they’re so finished that they’ll spend the rest of their lives babbling in a mental asylum. 

But she doesn’t. Logan and Steve will know who’s behind this and what they want by this evening, and until then, she, James, and Becs have to act as if they suspect nothing. 

 

Becs is being followed because somehow a rumor got around that the Winter Soldier had found time to get married and have a child before he (supposedly) died. Some ex-Soviet scientist who makes his living selling old armaments to Pakistani militants decided to take the rumors seriously. Knowing that the Black Widow was involved with the Winter Soldier, he set a tail on any redheads in the City of New York captured on security cameras who had children between the ages of one and three. Natasha just happened to be on the list.

She and Logan jump one of the scientist’s headquarters in the small hours of the next morning. It’s not heavily guarded, so getting to the big man is easy. Natasha has to force herself to remind Logan not to kill too many of the hired muscle. 

“So, the Black Widow,” drawls the scientist from behind a sparse metal desk.

“Mikhail Vovsk,” she replies, dragging him over the desk with his collar.

“What a lovely surprise. I haven’t seen you in decades, my dear. So glad to see you’re taking care of yourself.”

“You are terrorizing innocent women and their children. It stops now,” she spits, pinning him on the desk.

“Are they all really innocent? Or have I just stumbled upon the Black Widow’s most well-kept secret?”

“If you know anything about the Red Room program, you will remember that a side effect of treatment was forced sterility. Do not taunt me with a choice I do not have.”

“But there are two or three of these women who look just like you…”

“I was married once. Trust me when I say that could only be the result of perverted science that prevented us from having good, strong Russian children.”

“Doesn’t matter if he trusts you or not. He’s done no matter what he decides,” adds Logan.

Natasha smiles, and knocks Vovsk out with a well-aimed hit that’s probably more forceful than necessary. They turn him and his surviving cronies into SHIELD instead of handing him over to the Pakistani government. 

For weeks afterward, Natasha and James reach levels of vigilance that surprise even them. Clint jokes once about the two acting paranoid, but shuts up when James actually looks like he’s going to murder him. 

Eventually, though, things quiet down. It takes three weeks to convince Natasha that the Vovsk’s information didn’t get around, and just slightly longer for James. They go back to their more relaxed routine. No more casing the block every night and no more roundabout routes whenever they go out. They debate about picking up and moving, but decide against it. Vovsk kept his intelligence to himself, and Natasha and Bucky are careful to chase down every hired hand Vovsk took on. There’s practically no chance anyone knows what he was really after, and anyone who has an idea is in custody awaiting some sort of SHIELD brain wiping. 

And then it’s suddenly Rebecca’s second birthday. She’s not old enough to realize that it’s her birthday yet, but she laughs when James and Natasha sing “Happy Birthday” when they burst into her room in the morning. They give her a sippy cup of juice to nurse after they change, dress, and load her into the stroller for the walk to the breakfast place around the corner. Much to Natasha’s chagrin, they’ve become regulars. 

The sun is out and there’s a soft breeze, so they take a table outside and give Becs some plastic dinosaurs to play with in her high chair. The waitress who knows them comes over with a smile, and asks if James will have is usual tall stack. James answers enthusiastically, and Natasha smiles when she orders a fluffy Belgian waffle with Nutella for herself, and chocolate chip pancakes as a treat for Becs.

“Celebrating today, are we?” the waitress asks.

“It’s Rebecca’s second birthday today,” Natasha replies, handing her the menus. 

“Really! Well, happy birthday Miss Becca,” the waitress cries, leaning over and touching Becs gently on the shoulder. She walks away and Natasha smiles gently after her. She turns back to her family, and notices that James is resting his head on his arm and giving her that look.

“God. It’s been two years,” he says quietly, smiling. 

“Sometimes it feels longer, doesn’t it?”

“Sometimes. And sometimes it feels like no time at all has passed.”

“You’re getting soft,” Natasha jokes, reaching over and playfully pinching at his arm, which isn’t quite as muscular as it used to be. 

James laughs and catches Natasha’s hand before she can pull away. He cups it in both of his own and places a gentle, lingering kiss on it, rubbing his thumbs on it when he’s done. 

“I still can’t believe it sometimes…” he trails off, looking between Natasha and Becs. 

Out of the corner of her eye, Natasha sees Rebecca’s brontosaurus getting dangerously close to the edge of the table. A second later she knocks her elbow into in, and it starts to tumble to the ground. Without thinking, Natasha swipes her hand out of James’, and catches the toy halfway through its fall.

James laughs and Becs looks at Natasha with wide-eyed amazement as she sets the dinosaur safely on the table. Natasha presses a kiss to the birthday girl’s head, and lingers, breathing in the smell of no-tear baby shampoo.

And for a second, Natasha can’t believe any of it, either. That she’s sitting outside a (classy) pancake house in Brooklyn with her baby and her lover (there has to be a better term for it. She and James will have to get on that soon.) Her baby is turning two today, this afternoon there will be a party with cake and presents and a slew of Avenging aunts and uncles competing to see who can spoil Becs the most. 

Natasha turns back to James, her hand still on Rebecca’s head, and smiles. 

“Well, you’d better believe it, because Becs has a wet diaper and it’s your turn to change her.”


End file.
